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The Synaesthesia Thread

Erm...I'm afraid I thought red when I saw the question. Sorry to disagree with everybody. And I read the Radio Times, and I've never noticed what colour the pages are.
 
The future'sbright; the future's Orange. On Wednesday, anyway.
 
Days have two colours to me ( I like to be difficult :D )
Monday:Black and white
Tuesday: Dark blue and silver
Wednesday:Orange and brown
Thursday: Dark green and blue
Friday:Brown and grey
Saturday:green and grey
Sunday:yellow and blue
Next week they will be a completely different combination of colours and the next week different again and so on.
 
Pinkle, I mentioned it... about 3 posts ago... :rolleyes:
 
bugger.
I did scan the thread, and I didn't see your post.
As mine doesn't add anything, I will delete it.

Sorry.
 
I'm afraid my answer was inextricably intertwined with that darn Mallet.

I was born on a Wednesday and [allegedly] such kids are full of woe.

Hence woe > wogan > doonican > rafferty's motor car

And I see more dark green cars than any other shade. :rolleyes:
 
Is it possible to have a type of synaesthesia that makes one smell things when one sees certain things?
I'm only asking for a friend of course.....
 
garrick92 said:
How have we managed to get this far without mentioning synaesthesia?
Click to expand...

Yeah I thought that and posted a big thing about it, with pretty links and everything, then taras pointed out that s/he'd done a post about it. It's about 12 posts down.

I think we're having a form of selective blindness where we keep missing taras' post. :D

pinkle
 
I read (or at least used to read) the Radio Times, but IIRC the green they use is close to British Racing Green, whereas my view of Wednesdaygreen is much paler and more sickly?

Am I right in saying that Wednesday is close to the middle of the magazine, therefore more likely to be left open on that page?

If not, because it's the middle of the week, one you will see as you try and find both Tuesday and Thursday... etc. (i.e., you're unlikely to look at Saturday on the following Friday because they're so far apart, but you're always quite close to Wednesday)

In other words, this would make the association closer on Wednesday than on others?
 
I asked Hubcap what colour Wednesday was, and after he'd suggested I was ready for collection, he said red, same as me, but uniquely on this thread. (He also reads the RT). So you should all ask your partners this question. There may be more weirdness involved than we thought.
 
Why are you discussing whether there is anything in some people seeing wednesday as blue, and others as green? Synaesthesia is a cross over between two adjacent bits of the brain - unless you're related there is no reason why you would have the same crossover as someone else. If you think of it like a wiring fault; maybe people in the same family will have the same fault, but it's bound to vary in all the other synaesthetes.

pinkle
P.S Beak- I'm not implying you're related to hubcap. :D
 
That's ok Pink, sometimes we feel like we were seperated at birth (and we look so alike too ;) )
The point of this-if there is indeed a point-is that most of us aren't syneasthetes, so any colour we pick must have a deeper meaning, either memory association based or something else. It's also interesting because it relates to Jung's collective unconcious.
 
garrick92 said:
Tell you what, since I'm here, how does the fact that the Radio Times's "Wednesday" pages are green prove *anything*?
...
Click to expand...
I don't read the Radio Times, so my choice wasn't goverved by any asssociation with it's printing habits. But as a child I was taught the mnemonic "Richard Of York Gains Battles In Vain", the capital letters being the capital letters of the colours of the spectrum, in the exact order in which they appear.

There are 7 colours with green being the middle one. Wednesday is also thought of as the middle day of the week. My thesis therefore is that if green was the most popular colour put forward, then this may be the reasoning behind it.

The days of the week which people work may exert an influence on their concept of which day is the middle. For example if your days off are Wednesday and Thursday, then you might well class Saturday as the middle day of the week.

As for Wednesday being red, there is a rhyme which states that "Wednesday's child is full of woe". The other bad day in this rhyme is Saturday, as its child works hard for a living. People influenced by this rhyme might see "woe" or "hard work" as a form of danger signal, hence the red association.

EDIT/: Other reasons why people might see Wednnesday as red or green:

RED: If you work Monday to Friday then you might feel the need to put the brakes on come Wednesday in order to cope with the remainder of the working week.

GREEN: Using Mother Nature's analogy, green represents the mid-point of fertility between the blue/violet of the sky and the orange/red of the earth's core. / END EDIT
 
beakboo said:
That's ok Pink, sometimes we feel like we were seperated at birth (and we look so alike too ;) )
The point of this-if there is indeed a point-is that most of us aren't syneasthetes, so any colour we pick must have a deeper meaning, either memory association based or something else. It's also interesting because it relates to Jung's collective unconcious.
Click to expand...

Beaky, (and butterfly),

Dr. Ramachandran suggests that we are all synaesthetes to some degree - it's how language developed, and the ideas of metaphor and abstraction.
So while there may be some external influence that's causing you to see colours for days of weeks or whatever, it's actually More likely in this case that it's in fact synaesthesia.
It's not a magic power, it's a common occurance in humans.

I'd recommend you listen to this years Reith lectures if at all possible - they are brilliant.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/

Transcripts are also available at the link above.

pinkle
 
from irc: "I prefer to think of wednesday as a day, not a colour. I find I need less crack that way."


:rofl:
 
taras said:
from irc: "I prefer to think of wednesday as a day, not a colour. I find I need less crack that way."


:rofl:
Click to expand...
:rofl:

Thanks for the link, Pinkle. Its a fascinating subject.
 
I read the first post and thought Wednesday was yellow.

But that's probably because I'm a jammy part-timer and Wednesdays are my Fridays :)
 
Insights into Synesthesia

When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues--so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded, making it easier for her to remember and play musical scales. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee, Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia. They experience the ordinary world in extraordinary ways and seem to inhabit a mysterious no-man's-land between fantasy and reality. For them the senses--touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell--get mixed up instead of remaining separate.

Its a long article, and I'm off to read it in a minute!
Its here on the scientific american site :)
 
Synesthesia...
That is the sort of thing some people were discussing on the Thinking about Thinking thread
- sensations that seem to cross over from one part of your mind (or brain) to another.
Used to get it a lot ages ago under the influence of certain substances...
but I'm far too old for all that now.
Wierd though-
ever tasted pink?
smelt music?
 
Is there any consensus between synesthetics as to what colours/shapes things are?
 
Wednesday is a kind of dull, reddish-brownish orange colour, as any fule kno. As such it's awkward and uncooperative, sullen, almost unhealthy - in this respect it is like the number five. And unlike the twee meekness of Tuesday (light blue; four) or the square, geometric strength of Thursday (eight; deep blue). A slightly obnoxious day that rarely fails to annoy and drain, and is only redeemed by its pivotal role in getting the working week out the way. Or are there any perverse Wednesday-lovers among us?
 
I've tried and tried but I just don't associate wednesday with any colour.

I'm not being deliberately perverse, my psyche just fails to make any link.

shrugs
 
tomsk said:
.com.org. Or are there any perverse Wednesday-lovers among us?
Click to expand...
If Wednesday was a dwarf it would be not quite but almost *******woful. :rolleyes:
 
I think I might have "vision into smell" syneasthesia, either that or I habitually hallucinate smells. This is possible, presumably?
 
When I see things in real life, I smell things. Not always though, which makes me suspect it isn't synaesthesia. Also, it's always smells relating to the sight, which also suggests something else.
 
Not really, but then colours and smells are such different senses. When I say the smells are related to the sight, i mean I see a person in nurse's uniform and I smell hospitals, or I see a picture of Elvis and I smell peanut butter.
 
That's what I suspected. I do have an incredibly powerful sense of smell, and I've only "hallucinated" smells since having M.E. (one of the little known symptoms I suspect, never met another ME person with this one).
 
synesthaesia

It was only quite recently that I realised that this 'ability' was an actual documented fact and that my sister and I weren't the only people in the world to experience it!

What no one has mentioned on this thread is 'texture' - also an important element in identifying with days of the week, months of the year, numbers, letters of the alphabet, people's names, random words....etc...etc....!

So...Monday is a dark greeny-blue and it's ...knitted (or possibly woven like a heavy tweed)

Tuesday is cool and shiny and a pale turquoise and silver colour.

Wednesday is red, outlined in brassy gold and is 'wavy' like a flag.

Thursday is dark forest green and has the texture of felt.

Friday is light brown and is like an unvarnished, grained wood and is very 'light' in weight....

Saturday is beige and has a very faint overlay of something like small newsprint.

Sunday is navy blue velvet and a sort of silver satinised fabric and there is folds and folds of it ....all bunched and flowing.....!

Someone on the thread mentioned earlier that it is surprising that we don't all have the same descriptions of these things. It's not really - my sister has totally different colours for everything than I do, and of course these are all entirely personal because they are somehow being created by our own subconsciouses (is that a proper word??)
 
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